201–210 of 309 posts
How do we create an incentive model that kills the “parked domain” industry without out pricing people who want to host a legitimate non-commercial personal site? At first glance I was happy to see the headline because it means it’ll be more expensive for squatters to profit, but then I do sympathize with people using these domains for legitimate non-commercial purposes.
The .io TLD is owned by Ethos Capital. The same private equity company that tried to buy the .org TLD a while ago. Go figure...
Ethos Capital is run by former ICANN leadership [1]. The problem is centralized control leads to price gouging efforts. As they say you should avoid a monopoly. Some things, like domain names which are becoming the backbone of the internet, really should be owned and controlled by the commons as opposed to a single entity or dictator. We have learned this time and time again. Luckily, projects like Handshake [2] have…
Ted from Namecheap here. Donuts, who now operates the .io TLD, is only increasing the wholesale price by ~10%. We are still obviously not happy about this since it's always our goal to ensure that domain pricing is as accessible as possible to our customers. It would appear that Gandi has just chosen to substantially increase their markup as part of this Donuts update. Our pricing will likely only increase a small am…
Ted from Namecheap here. Donuts, who now operates the .io TLD, is only increasing the wholesale price by ~10%. We are still obviously not happy about this since it's always our goal to ensure that domain pricing is as accessible as possible to our customers. It would appear that Gandi has just chosen to substantially increase their markup as part of this Donuts update. Our pricing will likely only increase a small am…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense in this world, you just dislike it. I can buy a domain that costs $50 a year and I can squat on that 40 years until I would be in the loss margin for a $2,000 resell value and $2,000 is minor money for resell values. You make it $200 and then it's only 10-years, 10-years is a long time but not that long if you look at how long some people have been squating on domains. You increase the risk of not maki…
> This talk of outpricing people, people are buying domains for thousands for their pet projects, so let's remain in the world of here and now. The world of "here and now" would be acknowledging that "thousands of dollars" outprices a significant majority of the world. Even if you take a US-centric view, that's going to outprice the majority of the population. If you're working at McDonalds for $12/hr with a pet proj…
It's significant for me. But I would still be willing to spend it to work on something i cared about. Just like I was willing to spend money on forming a company to protect myself legally.
I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of domains that are owned but not being used aren't truly being squated on for profit but have people sitting on them for side projects they never started/finished and the cost of holding the domain is so little that they'll pay out $20-50 a year. I say this owning about 40 domains and I am not selling domains or even advertising domains. I just bought a bunch in the last year for projects and then decided I didn't like that domain so bought another one. The cost is so low that I can do that without worrying and without thought.
> If you're working at McDonalds for $12/hr with a pet project on the side, a $1,000 domain would take 83 hours of work to pay for. That's two weeks and change of full-time work. You're not going to be able to pay for that while also paying rent and other bills.
If you're working at McDonalds for $12/hr you gotta bigger problems like being able to afford an apartment to stay in. Saying they can't afford luxuries such as domain names when they can't afford the basics such as somewhere to stay, food, etc. is pointless. They can't afford a domain just now.
FYI Cloudflare currently charges $30 per year for .io domains.
Probably only for first year. Most TLDs are discounted significantly for the first year to get you in the door, then when you've built your business on the domain they hit you with the real fee when the renewal rolls around.
Ted from Namecheap here. Donuts, who now operates the .io TLD, is only increasing the wholesale price by ~10%. We are still obviously not happy about this since it's always our goal to ensure that domain pricing is as accessible as possible to our customers. It would appear that Gandi has just chosen to substantially increase their markup as part of this Donuts update. Our pricing will likely only increase a small am…
TBF to Gandhi, IIRC they tend to give favourable prices when you buy domains or deposit funds in bulk. Their opening tier of prices are indeed pricey. Their API is excellent though. I've always found Namecheap to be price competitive and their customer service is pretty good also. API was always a bit basic (think that had a lot to do with enom implementation)
I do admit that our API needs some love - fortunately we have a lot of major backend updates in the works and a new API will follow at some point. Unrelated but we did roll out a new API (entirely separate from the API you're referring to) for our Auctions platform: https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/12017783/TW6wKUfy. Curious to get your feedback if you're interested in taking it for a spin!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ethos Capital has a mortgage operation. My experience with them lead me to the conclusion that their name does not imply "ethical".
What is scary is that Ethos Capital is made up entirely of ICANN affiliates. In other words, these are the same people that govern our domain names. Pretty fucked up if you ask me. They are also going around buying up basically every major TLD. Lease with ICANN and be subject to their price gouging forever or own with Handshake, the only thing ICANN is afraid of [1], and never pay again. [1] https://www.icann.org/en/…
FYI Cloudflare currently charges $30 per year for .io domains.
Chances are they'll have to follow this price increase, at least, if they don't want to start actively losing money on each domain purchase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The stupidity of thinking what "the best TLD for your startup" is. In the meantime all respectable startups and big companies use .com like normal people.
Likely because 'respectable startups' (with money) can afford to buy the .com. https://www.arbo.works/ is a new, and very respected startup. They don't have a .com (yet).